| I
laughed.
“Wrong lake, Mark.” “Something tells me we’re about to hear the biggest damn fish story since Moby-Dick,” said Dad. That may have been the only literary allusion my father ever uttered, at least in my presence. “This huge thing in the water attacked my fish, all right? I don’t care who believes me and who doesn’t. It’s the truth. I thought it was a sturgeon at first, or maybe a garfish. Then I saw its legs and its flippery feet and my lunker fish in its mouth and I thought, how the hell did a crocodile get in Lake George? But when I saw that long neck I knew it wasn’t a croc. Then it dove real quick and started thrashing in the water. That’s all I remember.” Since it was obvious from the gash that something had sliced through half his arm, Mark’s father declared in a voice filled with certainty, “It was a sturgeon, son. Your wild imagination’s just got the better of you.” “Didn’t you see its wings?” Charlene asked her brother. “Wings? Are you nuts? It didn’t have wings.” “I saw big bat-wings.” Mark thought a moment, then his round face lit up. “Champ was upside down when you saw him! Those were his feet, his big flipper-feet, he’s an amphibian, y’know. You know how puppies that are gonna be big dogs have to grow into their feet? Well, this pup has to grow into his flippers. It’s a baby Champ.” “Who is this Champ he keeps talking about?” Mark’s mother asked his father as though Mark wasn’t even there. Or all there. “You never heard of Champ?” I asked. “Edward,” said my mother, again like I was ten, “you were not being spoken to.” “Champ,” explained Mr. Morrison, “is the monster, or family of monsters, that some people claim is living in Lake Champlain.” “We’re staying on Lake George,” my mother reminded us all with some degree of certainty. “I read in the paper there was a sighting near Port Henry last week,” said Mark. “Remember, Eddie? I showed you the article. Those kids and their scoutmaster saw a whole family of them.” “Sure,” I said. “I remember.” “They prob’ly all ate the same mushrooms,” Robert suggested. He smiled when Charlene giggled. He was so befuddled by her he was ready to believe her little fantasy, which was clearly more farfetched than Mark’s hypothesis. “Port Henry is on Lake Champlain, Mark,” said his father. “Right but it’s far enough south that maybe the baby wandered off! Swam south. Maybe he made it into that river what-is-it? that connects the two lakes, maybe he crossed into Lake George.” |
“La Chute River?” his father laughed. “Oh come on, Mark, that means swimming all the way through Ticonderoga. Somebody would’ve seen it.” “Not necessarily.” I was suddenly very enthused, although I still favored the sturgeon theory. “Or maybe it crossed over on land, around Cold Spring. That’s not far at all. At night, nobody woulda seen it.” “Hey yeah!” Mark was happy his friend was backing him up. Later that night back at the cottage, Mark was tucked in sound asleep from the painkillers they were giving him, and I was supposed to be in bed too, but I was awake standing in the dark hall listening to the four parental units in the living room. “So,” said Dad, ever the skeptic, “our choice is between Puff the Magic Dragon and the lost puppy Champ. You need to have a talk with your pups, Morrison.” “I don’t really care what the hell it was, Vince. All’s I care about, they’re gonna be all right.” “Physically, yeah, but mentally, I ain’t so sure.” “You know what I think?” my mother said. “They’re hiding something. They each concocted a story that perfectly fit their peculiar personalities.” “Carla,” said Mark’s mother, “I’ll thank you not to call my children peculiar.” “I meant particular, sorry. Mark’s into dinosaurs, right? and Charlene’s into dragons.” “Right,” said Anna Morrison. “So Mark saw a dinosaur and Charlene saw a dragon. So what?” “So they’re hiding whatever it was they really saw. It’s as simple as that.” “But why would they do that?” their mother demanded. “And what the hell was it?” my father wanted to know. “It was probably a sturgeon,” I said, coming forth in my pajamas. “Or maybe a psychotic otter.” “Edward, go back to bed.” “No really.” I decided the best plan was to get the parents off the whole matter. “In 1951, somebody took a shot at what he thought was Champ. A day later a dead sturgeon with a bullet hole in it turned up on shore near Westport, I think. Same thing happened more recently with an otter.” “An otter. Thanks for the information, son.” said Dad. “Now hit the rack.” |
| The next day my father showed me the local paper. I was glad to learn that several people had seen the fireball, although apparently no one else had seen the remnant meteorite fall into the lake. There was also an article about something strange seen (by several different people from different spots) in Lake George further north from where we were staying—near Mossy Point—the day before Mark and Charlene’s close encounter. The thing was described by a fisherman as “undulating” in the water like a snake, only vertically, creating dark green humps, then disappearing under water. A sunbather on a dock swore she saw a black whirlpool in the lake, it seemed to tighten and shrink, then out of the eddy a long dark green neck swayed just under the water—though she admitted it could have been a mossy log. I couldn’t share this information with Mark right away, since the Morrisons had decided to cut their vacation short and go home, where they felt Mark’s arm would get better care. The scar that eventually developed there always reminded me of an earthworm, and when we would go fishing together I would always point at it and suggest he use it for bait. |
